| Jiaozhou Bay data collected from May 1991 to February 1994, 12 seasonal investigations, and provided the authors by the Ecological Station of Jiaozhou Bay, were analyzed to determine the characteristics, dynamic cycles and trends of silicateThe results indicated that the rivers around the Jiaozhou Bay supplied the rich silicate to the whole Bay so that the silicate concentration varied with the flow varying. The horizontal variation of silicate concentration transect offshore from the coast with estuaries showed that after the flow’s carrying plentiful silicate into the Bay, the longer the distance was from the coast with estuaries, the lower the silicate concentration is in the waters. The vertical variation of silicate concentration transect offshore from the coast with estuaries showed that silicate sank and deposited to the marine bottom by the action of phytoplankton take-up and death, and zooplankton excretions. In this way, silicon would endlessly be transferred from terrestrial sources to marine bottom. The characteristics and transferences of diatoms and the ingestions and excretions of zooplankton elucidated the biogeochemical process of silicon, which showed the reason of phytoplankton’s being lack of silicon. These results further proved that nutrient silicon is a limiting factor of phytoplankton growth. |
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